Sports Lifestyle

How to get the MMA athlete’s body by Mark Striegl

Barry Viloria on Oct 06, 2016 01:05 PM

To get those rock-hard abs and overall athletic built, go lean and clean. Take it from this Pinoy pride! (Photos by Vyn Radovan)

As world boxing events and mixed martial arts tournaments like the URCC and ONE Championship continue to build big audiences among sports spectators, combat sports and MMA are also becoming a huge trend among fitness enthusiasts. The amount of work anyone exerts in any MMA discipline (from amateur wrestling and Muay thai to BJJ and taekwondo) is good enough for cardio and strength building. After all, who wouldn’t want to be as ripped as Jon Jones now, or Randy Couture when older?

To achieve the bod of the MMA athlete, Fil-Am fighter Mark “Mugen” Striegl is all too familiar with the kind of discipline any fighter puts into his schedule. Standing at 5’8”, the ONE FC and Evolve MMA weighs at 150 lbs.

“The training is a big part of it,” he says of undergoing six sessions of which a week.

Because training is everything, Striegl advises that “first and foremost, you have to find a good gym with good instructors, good people with no ego, just a nice, family environment. That’s the best way to learn because there’s a lot of gyms out there with unqualified trainers and coaches, and guys who just try to beat up each other. There’s too much ego, and you wanna stay away from those kind of people!”

Striegl then moves on to emphasize that the rest is about the diet and learning how to manage it. He suggests consuming foods containing complex carbs, like brown rice, wheat bread, oatmeal, and sweet potatoes over white bread and white rice. Striegl also recommends foods with high amount of protein after every workout: chicken breast, salmon, and eggs.

“Stay away from crispy pata, liempo, and bagnet, all the good stuff but are fatty and oily!” he laughs.

Think you’re down to get the MMA athlete’s physique? Striegl helped devise the following workout, which focuses on “more dynamic and explosive movements” for a two-fold purpose: lose weight and tone fast. Perform all exercises for 30 seconds with 10-second breaks between exercises. Try to get as many reps as you can!